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Politico
30-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
The tech deal behind DOJ drama
A major deal between two tech companies is threatening to tear the Department of Justice's antitrust division apart. The DOJ this week reportedly fired two senior antitrust officials, and the story so far has been insidey, gossipy and shrouded in mystery about intra-Republican tensions. The Wall Street Journal reports that the officials — Roger Alford and William Rinner, who had served in the department during President Donald Trump's first term — were fired for insubordination after weeks of discord within the division about a corporate acquisition. The firing also calls into question the future of antitrust chief Gail Slater's tech enforcement agenda. Curiously, the deal at the center of the drama was — if anything — a run-of-the-mill antitrust case. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a wireless network company, proposed to acquire another internet services company called Juniper Networks in 2024, for $14 billion. Juniper was known for its innovations in incorporating AI into wireless systems, and like seemingly every other company in the tech world, HPE wanted to build more AI into its business. But the purchase rang antitrust alarm bells. Prior to the merger, HPE and Juniper were the second and third largest companies in the wireless network market respectively, behind Cisco. The DOJ sued in January to block the merger — its first antitrust challenge under Trump's second term. And then, abruptly, it dropped the case and settled in June, after winning some relatively small-bore concessions from the companies. According to the Journal, the firings were the result of an internal feud — and specifically, an argument over the potential influence of Trump-connected lawyers hired by HPE. This followed reporting by CBS that DOJ higher-ups had overruled Slater and her antitrust division to accept HPE's settlement offer and drop the suit. The department, in a statement, wrote to DFD that the decision 'was based only on the merits of the transaction.' An official at the White House told DFD that the allegations of political meddling in the deal were 'inaccurate and untrue,' and that it had not held a meeting regarding HPE in the past several weeks. So how did the HPE lawsuit end up the source of such internal drama? Legal experts told my colleague Nate Robson, when it was filed in January, that this was a pretty cookie-cutter case. The issue instead is the way that it ended, when the DOJ settled the case less than a week before it was set to go to trial. 'Settling close to trial isn't unusual,' said William Kovacic, chair of the FTC under President George W. Bush. 'Settling on weak terms is.' When the DOJ filed its challenge to the acquisition with a federal court in San Francisco, the department seemed to have a strong case. It contended that the two companies were fierce competitors. The complaint noted that HPE had been lowering prices and improving products to maintain its lead — the kinds of benefits to consumers that antitrust law is supposed to promote. Kovacic told DFD the department had convincingly alleged that the merger could lead to a 'significant increase in concentration' of power in a 'properly defined relevant market' in a way that would harm consumers. 'That usually is enough to create a presumption of illegality,' he said. HPE hired two Trump-connected lawyers to press its case, according to both the Journal and CBS. In June, the DOJ abruptly settled with the two companies. The settlement stipulated that the merger could go through if HPE divested its Instant On business for campus network services. It would also have to license Juniper's AI Mist system for local wireless networks. Some argue that those terms aren't quite commensurate with the DOJ's original concerns. 'The complaint on its face tells a pretty general story about harm to competition in the wireless solution market, including pretty big enterprise customers,' said Daniel Francis, who served as a deputy competition director at the Federal Trade Commission during Trump's first term. 'The proposed solution package seems much narrower.' (Francis, who worked with both Alford and Rinner during Trump's first term, called them 'straight shooters.') The Instant On business primarily serves certain small and medium-sized organizations, not larger ones. Francis added that the particular AI application was only one component of the broader competitive concerns. These legal oddities have fueled even more granular suspicions about politics driving the decision. A former official in the department's antitrust division pointed DFD to the signature page of the settlement agreement, which does not include any career antitrust attorneys. 'The moment I saw it, the moment many of my other former colleagues saw, it screamed [to us] as something strange happened here,' said the official, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality restrictions. While this may indicate that career antitrust officials didn't have much say in the matter, it's at least plausible that there were solid, non-political reasons. Axios reported on Wednesday that intelligence officials intervened to persuade the DOJ that the merger would be critical for competing with China-backed companies. It's unclear how exactly this would impact national security, though HPE does contract with the Department of Defense. However, this looks to some like a fig leaf. Douglas Farrar, an FTC official during the Biden administration, wrote on X that the intelligence community in his experience would 'never step in to stop a regulator from blocking an illegal deal.' Kovacic said there needs to be a strong national security case for it to play a major factor. 'You've got to explain in what way the merger implicates those concerns,' said Kovacic. 'You cannot get your deal through simply by coming in and saying, 'China, China, China.'' The White House doubles down on AI exports One of Trump's top tech officials made the case Wednesday for pushing American AI technology abroad despite the risks of it falling into the hands of foreign adversaries, POLITICO's Mohar Chatterjee reports. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, argued at a national security event that increasing AI exports is the best way to compete with China. 'Everyone in the world should be using our technology, and we should make it easy for the world to use it,' Kratsios said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He added, 'If most countries around the world are running on an AI stack that isn't American and potentially ones of an adversary, that's a really, really big problem.' Krastios further asserted that security measures like tracking shipments and verifying the identities of customers could keep restricted U.S. technology out of China's hands. Kratsios's comments come as critics raise concerns over the administration's decisions to send chips to build data centers in the Middle East, and resumed sales of Nvidia's H20 chips to China. EU deal leaves open questions on tech rules After striking a trade deal Sunday to avoid a battle of tariffs, the European Union and U.S. now have differing views on how it would affect tech regulations, POLITICO Europe reports. In broad strokes, the handshake deal places a 15 percent tariff on goods from the EU and calls for multi-billion-dollar purchases of U.S. military and energy products. Not mentioned in the agreement to the chagrin of some Republicans and tech leaders are strict EU laws that restrict AI development, content moderation and data collection. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had previously said such tech regulations were not up for debate, and an EU official told POLITICO Monday that the bloc had not made any commitments regarding them. A day later, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spoke of the EU's 'attack on our tech companies' on CNBC. 'That's going to be on the table,' he said. post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@ Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It's Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs. Donald Trump Over the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
The intra-Republican fight over the future of a major tax and borrowing bill intensified on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump lashed out and former White House favorite Elon Musk offered a sharp criticism of the proposal. The whole thing played out, as today's political dramas so often do, in a series of posts on social media. Trump slammed Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) in a Tuesday morning post on Truth Social that accused the senator of having "very little understanding" of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), which the House passed last week. The bill would extend the 2017 personal income tax cuts and includes a number of new tax and spending provisions. Trump wrote that the bill is a big "WINNER." He may see it that way, but every independent assessment of the package says it will add at least $3 trillion to the long-term deficit (and potentially as much as $5 trillion). That means the bill is doing the opposite of what Trump vowed to do in March during his speech to Congress, when he promised to balance the budget. The prospect of that increased borrowing is at the root of Paul's objections. In a post on X, Paul seemingly responded to Trump's criticism by showing that he understands exactly what the BBB would do. "The math doesn't add up," Paul wrote. "I'm not supporting a bill that increases the debt by $5 [trillion]. I refuse to support maintaining Biden spending levels." Paul reiterated his view on the bill: He wants to extend the 2017 tax cuts, but in such a way that does not add to the deficit. In his posts on Tuesday, Paul added that "at least 4 of us in the Senate feel this way." Four GOP votes against the bill would be enough to block its passage through the Senate. Musk, who officially departed from his role in the White House last week, jumped into the debate to criticize the bill. "I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination," Musk wrote. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it." Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R–La.), who shepherded the BBB through the House last week, told The Hill that Musk was "terribly wrong" to criticize the bill. Other conservatives suggested that Musk was motivated more by the loss of tax credits that benefit Tesla than by genuine concern about the deficit. Musk's motivations might not be pure, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. In a follow-up post on X, he wrote that "Congress is making America bankrupt." No lies detected there—and the BBB will make that situation worse. Musk and Paul are at least living in reality. The White House, meanwhile, has resorted to trying to discredit the independent entities that have scored the bill. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of engaging in partisan politics by saying the BBB would add to the deficit—echoing a criticism that Johnson made last week. That's a rather absurd allegation, considering the current director of the CBO is Phillip Swagel, a Republican who previously worked in the Bush administration and at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Math is not a conspiracy against Trump. The president and his supporters are free to disagree with the likes of Musk and Paul, but they should stop lying about the budgetary impact of the BBB and should admit that they support higher levels of borrowing. Then we could have an intellectually serious debate over the bill, instead of whatever this is. In the meantime, give credit to Musk and Paul for holding the line on fiscal responsibility. Few of their fellow Republicans are willing to do that these days. The post It's Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs. Donald Trump Over the 'Big Beautiful Bill' appeared first on
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Antirenewable bills die quietly in GOP-controlled Texas Legislature
A slate of bills targeting the Texas renewables industry are now doomed after missing a key deadline in the state House. The bills had become the focus in an intra-Republican battle over the future of Texas energy, and of GOP energy policy writ large — as well as the role of the state in administering markets. The fight in Texas echoed a similar fight in Washington, where red-state senators whose districts have benefited from billions in clean energy investment are now pushing back against a House-passed budget that seeks to eliminate Biden-era tax credits that incentivized that spending. In the Lone Star State, the fight has been an understated victory for the renewables industry. Taken together, the package of bills sought to impose strict limitations on the state's nation-leading renewables program. They were backed by far-right advocacy groups but opposed by significant factions of the state's business lobby. S.B. 819 would have strictly limited where wind and solar could be built. S.B. 388 would have required every new watt of wind or solar to be accompanied by a watt of new gas, despite the shortage of the gas turbines that would make that possible. And S.B. 715 would have required several gigawatts of existing wind and solar to purchase backup gas generation or pay a fine. While all three bills passed the state Senate over the last month, leadership in the House declined to put them on a crucial calendar in time for them to receive a vote before the session ends Monday. Polling from a pro-renewables conservative group suggests restrictions on renewables are broadly unpopular — and growing more so — even among most Texas Republicans. But the bills, two of which are updates of legislation introduced in 2023, are a sign of future political headwinds facing the state's renewables industry — particularly as a wave of new projects in the Texas exurbs, whatever their broad popularity, creates local discontent that antirenewables organizers are mobilizing around. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Anti-renewable bills die quietly in GOP-controlled Texas legislature
A slate of bills targeting the Texas renewables industry are now doomed after missing a key deadline in the state House. The bills had become the focus in an intra-Republican battle over the future of Texas energy, and of GOP energy policy writ large — as well as the role of the state in administering markets. The fight in Texas echoed a similar fight in Washington, where red-state senators whose districts have benefited from billions in clean energy investment are now pushing back against a House budget that seeks to eliminate Biden-era tax credits that incentivized that spending. In the Lone Star State, the fight has been an understated victory for the renewables industry. Taken together, the package of bills sought to impose strict limitations on the state's nation-leading renewables program. They were backed by far-right advocacy groups but opposed by significant factions of the state's business lobby. S.B. 819 would have strictly limited where wind and solar could be built. S.B. 388 would have required every new watt of wind or solar to be accompanied by a watt of new gas, despite the shortage of the gas turbines that would make that possible. And S.B. 715 would have required several gigawatts of existing wind and solar to purchase backup gas generation or pay a fine. While all three bills passed the state Senate over the last month, leadership in the House declined to put them on a crucial calendar in time for them to receive a vote before the session ends on Monday. Polling from a pro-renewables conservative group suggests that restrictions on renewables are broadly unpopular — and growing more so — even among most Texas Republicans. But the bills, two of which are updates of legislation introduced in 2023, are a sign of future political headwinds facing the state's renewables industry — particularly as a wave of new projects in the Texas exurbs, whatever their broad popularity, creates local discontent that anti-renewables organizers are mobilizing around.
